Back to Narnia in PRINCE CASPIAN by C.S. Lewis

Wow.. Two books in two days.  I have been soaking up the story and have finished Prince Caspian.  I think the take away from this book was the whole "faith of a child" as portrayed in Lucy.  She saw Aslan when the others didn't.  But was it because she saw him that she had faith in him, or was it because she had faith in him that she saw him.  I think it was the later.  Because as the others started to let go of their skepticism, they found that they were invited to share in the revelation that their sister was a part of.  I think that part of the story really captured my attention and my admiration.  I don't think Aslan hid himself from the others, as much as the others were hidden because of their doubt. 

Here is what I highlighted during my read through.  

 

"Eh? What's that?" he said. "What old days do you mean?"

"Oh, don't you know, Uncle?" said Caspian. "When everything was quite different. When all the animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees. Naiads and Dryads they were called. And there were Dwarfs. And there were lovely little Fauns in all the woods. They had feet like goats. And——"

"That's all nonsense, for babies," said the King sternly. "Only fit for babies, do you hear? You're getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales."

"Oh, but there were battles and adventures in those days," said Caspian. "Wonderful adventures. Once there was a White Witch and she made herself Queen of the whole country. And she made it so that it was always winter. And then two boys and two girls came from somewhere and so they killed the Witch and they were made Kings and Queens of Narnia, and their names were Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy. And so they reigned for ever so long and everyone had a lovely time, and it was all because of Aslan——"

"Who's he?" said Miraz. 

* * *

"As firmly as that, I dare say," said Trumpkin. "But who believes in Aslan nowadays?"

"I do," said Caspian. "And if I hadn't believed in him before, I would now. Back there among the Humans the people who laughed at Aslan would have laughed at stories about Talking Beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are."

* * *

“That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never can carry a map in their heads."

"That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy.”

* * *

"Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day, in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"

* * *

The only question is whether Aslan was really there."

"But I know he was," said Lucy, her eyes filling with tears.

"Yes, Lu, but we don't, you see," said Peter.

* * *

But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Lucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.

"Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan," sobbed Lucy. "At last."

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

"Welcome, child," he said.

"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."

"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.

"Not because you are?"

"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

* * *

"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?"

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."

* * *

Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, "Susan." Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. "You have listened to fears, child," said Aslan. "Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?"

"A little, Aslan," said Susan.

* * *

As for power, do not the stories say that the Witch defeated Aslan, and bound him, and killed him on that very stone which is over there, just beyond the light?"

"But they also say that he came to life again," said the Badger sharply.

"Yes, they say," answered Nikabrik, "but you'll notice that we hear precious little about anything he did afterwards. He just fades out of the story. How do you explain that, if he really came to life? Isn't it much more likely that he didn't, and that the stories say nothing more about him because there was nothing more to say?"

* * *

Thus Aslan feasted the Narnians till long after the sunset had died away, and the stars had come out; and the great fire, now hotter but less noisy, shone like a beacon in the dark woods, and the frightened Telmarines saw it from far away and wondered what it might mean. The best thing of all about this feast was that there was no breaking up or going away, but as the talk grew quieter and slower, one after another would begin to nod and finally drop off to sleep with feet towards the fire and good friends on either side, till at last there was silence all round the circle, and the chattering of water over stone at the Fords of Beruna could be heard once more. But all night Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.

* * *

"Yes—that and other things," said Peter, his face very solemn. "I can't tell it to you all. There were things he wanted to say to Su and me because we're not coming back to Narnia."

"Never?" cried Edmund and Lucy in dismay.

"Oh, you two are," answered Peter. "At least, from what he said, I'm pretty sure he means you to get back some day. But not Su and me. He says we're getting too old."

"Oh, Peter," said Lucy. "What awful bad luck. Can you bear it?"

"Well, I think I can," said Peter. "It's all rather different from what I thought. You'll understand when it comes to your last time.

* * * 

What happens when I stand on the precipice of my fantasy.  I am returning to my world and leaving it all behind me.  

"Can you bear it?"  asks Lucy

Peter replies; "I think I can."

Yes, Peter... I think I can too.  I am enjoying my dip back into fantasy, but at the end of my time in Narnia, I will return home and leave Aslan behind.  

Visiting Narnia in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE with C.S. Lewis

It's Easter Weekend and I started a reading project.  A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded "The Complete Works of C.S. Lewis"  I wanted to start with the Chronicles of Narnia, because, even through I have seen the three movies, I have never read the books.  

I started reading "The Lion, The Witch and the The Wardrobe" yesterday and finished it today.  

This will be the first time I have put a work of fiction on my book blog.  Fictions don't exactly make me think, but they invite me into a space that some other books can't (especially the Bible).  They give me a place to go where I don't need proof or certainty or belief.  I just need to embrace the story.  As I read, I highlighted... here is what I highlighted.  

But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be Human and isn't yet, or used to be Human once and isn't now, or ought to be Human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet. 

* * *

Unless you have looked at a world of snow as long as Edmund had been looking at it, you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white. 

* * *

And so the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him—buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur and stroked it and, so doing, walked with him. 

* * *

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the two girls rushing back to the Table.

"Oh, it's too bad," sobbed Lucy; "they might have left the body alone."

"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it more magic?"

"Yes!" said a great voice behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

"Aren't you dead then, dear Aslan?" said Lucy.

"Not now," said Aslan.

* * *

"Oh, children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!" He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs.

* * *

"Does he know," whispered Lucy to Susan, "what Aslan did for him? Does he know what the arrangement with the Witch really was?"

"Hush! No. Of course not," said Susan.

"Oughtn't he to be told?" said Lucy.

"Oh, surely not," said Susan. "It would be too awful for him. Think how you'd feel if you were he."

"All the same I think he ought to know," said Lucy. But at that moment they were interrupted.

* * *

But amidst all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn't there they said nothing about it. For Mr. Beaver had warned them, "He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion."

* * *

"Then in the name of Aslan," said Queen Susan, "if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us."

* * *

And the Professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn't tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story. "No," he said, "I don't think it will be any good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coats. You won't get into Narnia again by that route. Nor would the coats be much use by now if you did! Eh? What's that? Yes, of course you'll get back to Narnia again some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. 

If I went back to childhood and I was given a choice to grow up with Jesus or Aslan... I'd pick Aslan.  Maybe the storyline has similarities and that was probably the hope of C.S. Lewis.  He wanted to make Jesus somebody that a child would love.  I think he did that in Aslan.  

Two thousand years of religion did a number to the story of Jesus, that C.S. Lewis spared his readers from.  I am grateful for that.   I was hoping that I could find something redeemable in the Jesus story after my journey away from Christianity.  I found today that I can, however not so much in a Palestinian Jew, but in a Lion from Narnia.  

Embracing that which doesn't exist in THE IDOLATRY OF GOD with Peter Rollins

"...what if Christ does not fill the empty cup we bring to him but rather smashes it to pieces, bringing freedom, not from our darkness and dissatisfaction, but freedom from our felt need to escape them?" PR

The more I long to embrace a Creator that is far removed from the far away God I once embraced, the more books like this one entice me into a space of understanding a Creator that embraces more than needs to be coddled.  

Original Sin can be understood very simply as the sense of loss that all humans experience in the process of coming to self-awareness, while Idolatry refers to any object that we imagine can fill this inner void. To put it another way, we mistakenly feel that we have lost something central to our humanity (Original Sin) and then postulate some object we believe will restore what we have lost, something we believe will bring wholeness and fulfillment to our lives (the Idol). In this way the two terms are intimately interwoven, for without Original Sin there would be no Idolatry. Without the formation of the gap at the moment of self-awareness, we would not be provoked into imagining something that could fill it. Original Sin thus opens up the possibility of Idolatry. PR

I don't get close to anyone I worship.  That was true with my sister and even more true with God.  The more I worshipped God, the farther away that God got from me.  I wonder if that is the attraction to the Jesus story.  Maybe at heart, we don't want a God we can worship and remain as slaves to, we want a Creator that can embody us in our pain and humanity.  What if it is not just a want, what if it could be a reality.  

Jesus is presented to us as being at one with the source of all that is. Here we glimpse the idea that God is not that which lies ahead of us as a distant being we must attempt to reconcile with, but must be approached as the depth or ground that we can come into contact with once we are freed from the Idolatry that holds us captive. We must approach God as that reality we encounter indirectly through a deep and committed love of the world itself. PR

Love makes sense as the standard, if we can only understand the totality of Love.  

When someone is in love he cannot help but experience the world as meaningful, even if he doesn’t believe it is. While the one who does not love cannot help but experience the world as meaningless even if he believes that the world is meaningful. Love then infuses the world with meaning regardless of what one believes about it. By revealing God as love, the Christian tradition rejects the idea that God is a meaningful being in favor of the idea that God is that which lights up our world, rendering it meaningful to us. This means that unlike the Idol, which seems meaningful until grasped, the moment we lay down the idea of God as meaningful and find the world infused with meaning, we bear witness to the meaningfulness of the divine.  PR

I don't like to use "God" as the descriptor of that which gave me breath... because that name, that word still holds baggage for me in the communities I dwell in.  That name is still the idol of religion.  That which dwells far away.  

I realize I am restricted by language and culture.  Trying to break free of those shackles may be an exercise in futility.  I spend a lot of time trying to make my words mean something and sometimes it only invites conflict.  I don't like conflict.  So my other option is to let others just believe I agree with them, thus pretending to be someone I am not and also deceiving those I love.  Is that how I am to best navigate this life? 

While the Idol is a fiction that we experience as existing, we may say that the God of Christ is a reality that we experience as not existing.

Instead, this God is present as the source that calls everything into existence. The word “exist” literally means “to stand out.”

The main characteristic of something that exists is that we are able to treat it as an object of some sort. We are able to hold it, contemplate it, smell it, touch it, or hear it. The God hinted at in Christianity is that which calls everything into existence, all the while defying objectification. PR

God does not exist.  Love does not exist.  But everything is brought into existence by God, by Love... now that is meat worth chewing on.  "God" ceases to be an idol, and is that which sustains my breath and is that Flow that moves in, around and through me.  

Thank you Peter Rollins for yet another rocket read.  I find myself a little closer to embracing something that doesn't exist, and yet all that is in me and around me exists because of that something.  That is a something or someone worth embracing.  

A life in which the source of all is no longer approached as some being whom we ought to love, but as a mystery we participate in through the very act of love itself. PR

Being threatened is comforting with "THE DIVINE MAGICIAN" by Peter Rollins

"I wish to argue that this founding event—which I will explore as we go along—is not concerned with a set of beliefs concerning the world, but rather calls us to enter into a different way of existing within the world. The good news of Christianity—that is to say the life-giving event harbored within the tradition—is not an invitation to join an exclusive party. Indeed, as I hope to show, this good news involves discovering that those parties aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and that there is a way of celebrating life that is more authentic, enriching, and healing than anything we might find through membership to some special club." PR

I read books like "The Divine Magician  for the following reasons: 

My faith trajectory needs a little support

My mental discoveries need some affirmation

My insecurities need to die

"When a child goes to college there’s always a threat that she might learn new ideas and come back with a very different way of viewing the world—a way that might threaten the fabric of the traditions that once comforted her." PR

I feel alone on my journey, but the evidence is overwhelming that I am not.  I am not the only person who has looked at the traditions she came from and put a big question mark in front of them.  I am not the only person looking for a narrative that makes more sense  than the one that resembles more of a worn out hand-me-down sweater.  I am not the only one trying to find authenticity in a world of stage plays.  

"Faith not only demands that we create systems, but reminds us that any structure we form is ultimately made for people; people are not made for the structure. Faith thus demands that we both form views and opinions about how best to live in the world and acknowledge that these views need to be fluid, open, and rethought in relation to new situations." PR

There is a term known as "shit-disturbing" that has its origin in the back of the farmyard.  Over the years, piles of manure collect as the farmer continues to add to the pile.  Then one day, that farmer wants to take that manure and spread it on the field.  The process of disturbing releases a powerful odour.  This is known as "shit disturbing". 

What may turn away someone from the putrid smell, will also be a catalyst for growth.  For only when the shit is disturbed and spread on the ground, can true growth occur.  

Christianity, as a religious system, does not aim to transform the way we believe, but strives to mold and shape the content of our beliefs. What is judged here to be of prime importance is the actual belief that one affirms. So those who agree are deemed “saved,” and those who disagree are at best heretics, or at worst “lost.” PR

I am spending a lot of time mining the manure piles of this world (shit disturbing).  This is the stuff that may stink to the one not familiar with it, but when added to the ground of my life, I am hopeful for amazing growth.  In the end, it doesn't matter what ideology I embrace, what creed I sign off on, what language I speak or how I imagine the cosmos... what matters is how I love in this world.  

'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'

When Paul writes against “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world,” he is making it clear that the life of faith is not some worldview that can be learned in school. One could have the perfect philosophy and still be nothing but a clanging cymbal. PR

I think I could stop reading now and have my conclusion on how my life will best be spend.  I think I figured that out quite a few books ago.  But I keep reading and I keep getting reminded that Love is the ultimate of everything.

Thank you Peter Rollins.  This was a great read and it has helped me more to understand that there is still value in the narrative, even through I am 2000 years past a story that I can't prove in my mind.  Maybe it is a waste of time to wade in the murky waters of proof and evidence, when I can swim in a much bigger ocean of Faith, Hope and above all LOVE!!! . 

"The word supernatural is almost universally tied to a religious worldview. Regardless of whether we affirm the supernatural or deny it, the term seems inextricably and necessarily connected with belief in higher powers. Interestingly, however, this religious definition of the supernatural is concerned almost only with the purely natural realm. For instance, miracles are ascribed to physical occurrences like a resuscitation of someone who was dead or the feeding of a vast crowd with a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish.

In contrast, there is a different way of approaching the supernatural, one that doesn’t see it as describing a change in the natural realm, but rather as describing a change in how we interact with the natural realm (hence supernatural). This is a view of the supernatural that can be affirmed by the theist and the atheist alike." PR

The Butterfly View of "THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS" with Huston Smith

"What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life.  How does it sound from above?  Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony?  Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?"  HS

I won’t be able to go to a university to take a course in World Religions… but I did the next best thing. I picked up a book. Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions” has been such an eye opening and inspiring read. Smith takes the reader on a flight over the world’s religions and from a very elevated perspective. Instead of writing it from the position of a caterpillar in the ground surrounded by one expression of “faith”, he takes the reader on a butterfly’s vantage point to see what one can see from the top. There doesn’t seem to be any agenda except to see what every one has to offer in beauty of expression. It’s not a technical primer, but an invitation to see the world differently through the eyes of other humans. 

"But if we take those religions seriously, we need not fail miserably.   And to take them seriously we need do only two things.  First we need to see their adherents as men and women who faced problems much like our own.  And second, we must rid our minds of all preconceptions that could dull our sensitivity or alertness to fresh insights.  If we lay aside our preconceptions about these religions, seeing each as forged by people who were struggling to see something that would give help and meaning to their lives; and if we then try without prejudice to see ourselves what they saw-- if we do these things, the veil that separates us from them can turn to gauze." HS

In the years I traversed religion and my own expressions of it, I kept looking for "the right one".  There was no such thing as beauty in diversity, there was only a dualism in the works.  Someone was right and the rest were wrong.  So as I changed expressions over the years, I kept hidden within me the yucky feeling that was telling me that maybe we are all right or all wrong and maybe it isn't even about right and wrong.  What if every expression out in this great big world is beautiful and just a human attempt at the impossible... to understand the meaning and cause of our existence.  What if that venture is truly out of our reach, and the best we can do is imagine what could be?  

"That Hinduism has shared her land for centuries with Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians may help explain a final idea that comes out more clearly through her than through the other great religions;  namely, her convictions that the various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal. " HS

I have an admiration for the Hindu way of looking at life and people.  I spend two weeks in person and forty five years in relationship with my longest friend, Jenny.  In the two weeks I spent in her home in the tropics of Trinidad, I was never asked to change who I was, I was never shamed for who I was, I was only loved for who I was and that made a huge difference to me.   Because that was in 1991... and something in me then was taught and still believed that because of where she lived, the family in which she was raised and the way she prayed... she was not embraced by the Creator of the Cosmos.  In fact, in order to be embraced, she would have to change everything about her.  But for those two weeks, something in me greater than the religion I brought with me came to the surface... that something was a little thing called love.  For two weeks, I just learned and listened and took in what I could.  I left that country enriched because of the openness of their culture and their love for me.  

"To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not the next, in this attire, but not another. Normally people will follow the path that rises from the plains of their own civilization;  those who circle the mountain, trying to bring others around to their paths, are not climbing." HS

This book can encourage you to climb the mountain.  If your goal in life is just to circle the base and convince others that you are right and they are wrong... then maybe a book like this will have no place in your library.  But if you want to climb the mountain and gain an appreciation and love for the other climbers, then this book will give you a peek inside different worlds and different paths on that mountain.  

Religion may begin in ritual, but explanations are soon called for, so speculation enters as a third religious feature.  Whence do we come, whither do we go, why are we here?  -- people want answers to these questions. HS

I am in my fifties just starting to ask questions.  I am in my fifties just discovering my own passion.  I am in my fifties just wanting to see what love really looks like in this home we know as Earth. 

"Being finite, the human mind cannot begin to fathom the Infinite it is drawn to." HS

Here is my biggest question.  If we are truly finite and beyond us is an Infinite that we have no hope of fully comprehending or understanding, then why the need for so many soloists?  Is there not a place in this world for a vast choir of different voices?  

"We listen first because, as this book opened by noting, our times require it.  The community today can be no single tradition;  it is the planet.  Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home." HS

If this book does anything for the reader, I would hope it opens a door to understanding and love.  I used to believe I needed to change the world to think like me... I now want to embrace the only thing that can change the world... love.  And the way I understand love... it doesn't require that I change anyone... it only invites me into its flow and that is the most beautiful thing.  

For understanding, at least in realms as inherently noble as the great faiths of human kind, brings respect; and respect prepares the way for a higher power, love -- the only power that can quench the flames of fear, suspicion, and prejudice, and provide the means by which the people of this small but precious Earth can become one to one another." HS